By Development Office CIN

Hong Kong and Macau, June 8, 2015 - In order to prepare the Salesian schools and organizations in Hong Kong and Macau for the coming school year, the China Province organized meetings in the last 2 weeks. There were more than 200 participants from the schools and organizations who joined the meeting. They include the school supervisors, school principals and vice-principals, religious teachers and pastoral assistants, instructors, counsellors etc.

Fr. Lanfranco Fedrigotti, the Provincial of China Province, showed his appreciation for the effort, presence and collaboration of the mission partners from our schools and organizations. The Salesian community relies on the collaboration of its mission partners to carry out the Salesian charism, values and educative and pastoral approach wherever they are. Besides, the work in school and organizations are charitable works which reveal the mercy of God and that is very important.

He also announced the coming annual visitation of schools and these visits would extend to parishes and youth centres in the future plan of the Province. This would help the Province to know more about how the mission had been executed in the works. The visitation would be done according to the guidelines of the Church, and the Salesian society, so that the works would be reviewed accordingly.

Fr. Provincial commented that the Chinese culture contained in the ancient classics was similar to the vocational culture. God is personal, He requires us to know, understand and love Him. This is about the relationship between God and the person. Fr Lanfranco believed that catholic faith had the mission to help the Chinese to appreciate their own culture. Our culture of good news would nurture a healthy, discerning culture for the Chinese people.

Fr. Norbert Che worked in Jardins Versiglia in Macau. He echoed Fr. Provincial’s words by saying that mercy could only be manifested by being in contact with persons, so that charity could be shown to others and mercy became be effective.

Br. Joseph Cheung also shared ideas on how to promote social development and vocational culture in schools. Some of the participants shared that it was difficult to integrate vocation in school settings. In fact, vocation could be part of the career education of the students and living a consecrated life could be one of the ways of their life journey. Vocation promotion should start with providing an experience and learning about consecrated life, letting young persons think about vocation and respond bravely if they are called by God.